MySpace Music Looks Good, But It’s No iTunes Killer

MySpace Music has has some cool new features, but an iTunes killer it is not.

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The finest benefit of the new look is its playlist feature, which allows users to build playlists from search results or other people’s ‘lists using little Flash pop-up windows. Before the changeover, music fans had to leave MySpace and hop on Project Playlist or another site to build one and drag it back to their profiles kicking and screaming, or choose to stream only a single song.

MySpace Music went with the no-brainer, and made it easier while enabling the posting of multiple songs on profile pages. Kudos for catching up, NewsCorp!

Now, searching and finding tracks is like eating cake and so is embedding a single playlist on your profile, although there is no visible navigation for other finding other users’ "public" playlists. We’d like to see a prominent Playlists button on each profile pag to make it easier for users to hear each other’s choices (aside the ones they included in their profile playlist). If playlist sharing is the new hotness, why are those extra playlists so hard to find? They should be front and center, although users can easily access each other’s profile playlists.

It’d also be nice to search for user-created playlists based on the songs they contain. MySpace Music offers no such options, and woe to you if you click on the "Featured Playlists" section. Do you really want to know what The Jonas Brothers are listening to? If you do, stop reading this and head to Disney.com.

But either way, it’s a slight burial, almost a way of heading off less savvy navigators or ones that don’t like to read FAQs. And to the company’s credit, MySpace COO Amit Shakur told wired.com that the company plans to make non-profile playlists more prominent after launch kinks have been worked out and users have offered their feedback on the feature as it stands now. Multiple representatives at MySpace have referred to the development of this new music service as an "iterative" process, so we can likely expect refinements and improvements to trickly out over a matter of months.

The sensation of launch bugginess spread also to Amazon’s buy buttons, which I still can’t seem to activate, although they are visible. Perhaps it’s a work in progress, but ease-of-purchase is one of the recent launch’s more publicized possibilities. It should work too, simply and surely, for all songs in the service.

The music catalog needs work too. I didn’t have much trouble finding hits or deep cuts, from Three Mile Pilot’s "The Trail" to The Minuemen’s "Cut" and all the way to My Bloody Valentine’s "When You Sleep," and embedding them to my new MySpace profile page, created specifically for this test run.

But while much of the music library is impressive — as it should be considering it has all four majors and indie consortium The Orchard on board — it doesn’t organize music as helpfully as Imeem. Searches only look at song titles and artist names, so good luck finding out what other songs are on the album with a single click, the way you can with other services. That album metadata is available, so it’s lame to hide it. Finding The Beatles’ "I’m So Tired" or Charles Mingus’ epochal "Haitian Fight Song" required lots of work before I finally gave up. (It’s worth noting that the Beatles catalog is generally available on the service, though their songs cannot be purchased from Amazon MP3 or any other online music store.)

I’ll stick to Imeem for playlists, thanks very much, at least until the bugs are ironed out. Here’s the most important reason why: I can’t embed my MySpace Music playlists or favorite songs wherever I want, the way I can with Imeem. That alone is a dealbreaker.

The good news? I didn’t see many ads on the songs or videos themselves. Which makes me wonder: Is thing thing on? Whether it is or not, MySpace Music is News Corporation and the major labels’ way of saying they get the new music economy. Better late than never, I guess, but after spending a couple hours with MySpace Music, the service is nowhere near the hybrid of Imeem and iTunes that I already use.

Still, it’s a magical upgrade for those who cling to MySpace’s social phenomenon like it was street cred. If MySpace and the majors decide to "stop pushing forward back" and offer outside playlist embedding, the prominent display of user-created playlists and a fair way to incorporate indie labels and bands into the service, their joint MySpace Music venture may achieve its full potential. But not before.